Inspired by the massive media coverage of and the numerous protests against theinternational treaty ACTA and the proposed U.S. bills SOPA and PIPA in early 2012, thispaper seeks to evaluate why these legislations give rise to such controversy. It does soby identifying and analyzing the societal circumstances and the respective parties ofthe conflict, in order to acquire a more exact understanding of the crucial points of thecontroversy, which are then subject to further analysis and discussion. It is concludedthat ACTA, SOPA and PIPA provokes strong reactions due to their interference withbasic democratic freedoms on the internet, and by complicating the copyrightlegislation, which already seems to be out of tune with the way culture is producedand consumed in a digital age. Furthermore they do so with a relatively narrowcommercial interest, rather than in serving society as a whole, which only adds to thecontroversy.